As the world waits with bated breath for The Last of Us 2 to come out, many fans have circumvented the anticipation of waiting to see the sequel to Naughty Dog’s highly-acclaimed survival horror game by creating their own takes. Not long ago a LEGO version of The Last of Us hit the Internet, and now YouTuber Bearly Regal has shown the world what it would look like if the games were developed for Sony’s PlayStation 1.
In The Last of Us 2, Ashley Johnson’s Ellie will be taking the center stage as a main protagonist in place of the first game’s Joel, played by Troy Baker. Using Media Molecule’s robust creation tool Dreams on the PS4, Bearly Regal has created a six-minute demo video for a PS1-styled level in which Ellie searches for Joel in an abandoned safe-house surrounded by the zombie-like Infected.
Some people might remember Bearly Regal; or Bearskopff on Reddit where the video was cross-posted to r/PS4Dreams, r/thelastofus, and r/PS4 Friday; for creating similar demakes of games like Cyberpunk 2077. Their take on The Last of Us has a high degree of quality and is full of small details like a Naughty Dog logo inspired by their mascot from the 80s and Ellie putting her hand up against a wall each time she’s near one.
In the comments of their post on the Dreams subreddit, Bearly Regal says this is their final demake project before moving ahead with original ideas. They say at least one of those ideas will take on the same PS1 aesthetic but likely with a more modern voxel technique, giving some truth to the claim by former Head of Sony’s Worldwide Studios Shawn Layden that Dreams will change how people develop games.
The hype surrounding The Last of Us 2 is palpable, so it makes sense that the property is something fan creators would fervently jump onto. Many people, including God of War director Cory Barlog, consider the first game one of the finest titles produced in the 2010s — if not one of the finest games of all time.
Bearly Regal says they will probably not make their playable take on The Last of Us 2 public because it’s based on an existing IP. Luckily fans of the series will probably find out more about the upcoming Naughty Dog game at the Taipei Game Show, and in the meantime everyone can expect some great original content from Bearly Regal sometime in the future.
The Last of Us 2 will be released on May 29 exclusively for the PlayStation 4.